Enter the Dawah Hub....
With the ongoing onslaught against Islam, the rise of Islam is an inevitable phenomenon. While Islam is on its way to reaching its former glory, we give you this opportunity to enter the dawah hub and share the message of Islam to the rest of the world. Useful dawah articles, perspectives on current affairs, resources for dawah to non-muslims, direction on dawah to Muslims, Muslim women issues, youth contribution and much more....InshaAllah

Saturday 29 January 2011

News Perspective: The Muslim Ummah deserves REAL change


All across the Muslim world, ordinary Muslims are waking up to the prospect that change is possible
The unprecedented wave of public demonstrations in recent weeks began in Tunisia, toppling the tyrant Zine al-Abedine Ben-Ali. They have since swept through the rest of the ummah shaking the thrones of oppressors. Now protests against the Egyptian regime have grabbed the world’s attention with courageous protesters openly defying the forces of one of the world’s most brutal and fearsome regimes. Images of unarmed civilians pouring out from Friday prayers to face batons, tear gas, tanks and rubber bullets with their Iman and their voices have spread throughout the globe.
The truth is that such outpouring of anger and frustration was always inevitable. The presence of these regimes ruining the lives of the people, impoverishing them and destroying their hope whilst they amass huge riches and treat the people as their slaves was always going to lead to conflict.
The only question was when the ummah would rise up against their rulers, not if. Knowing this the dictators in every part of the Muslim world have always tried to subvert momentum for change so it ultimately achieves nothing of substance and the situation remains as it always was.
So when the people decide to act decisively they will face offers and proposals to buy time for the regime, to let the energy for action calm a little, to divide the people, prevent them from achieving lasting results and to maintain the existing state of affairs.
Whenever pressure builds on these regimes the ummah is routinely offered a few crumbs to appease them and buy them off, hoping they’ll settle for something cosmetic that will appear like a victory but will only uphold the status quo of the ugly regime. Perhaps the regime will offer a few reforms, some handouts of money or food, the promise of an election or even a new face to replace the old tyrant but who will continue to oppress them and prevent the real solution for the disastrous situation to emerge.
Real change does not come through a change of faces. It doesn’t come from a plodding reform. It is sudden, it is sweeping, it is uncompromising and it is comprehensive. Genuine change is to remove the systems of kufr in our lands once and for all. Genuine change is to return to what the people of the region have lived under in peace, independence and prosperity for over a thousand years. Genuine change is for the Ummah to liberate herself from the shackles of its oppressors and return again to living under the shade of the Islamic Khilafah state.
The West also fear real change in the Muslim world knowing full well what it means. The rise of Islam to power and influence in world affairs represents an ideological challenge to their dominance of global politics and finance and is utterly unacceptable to them.
This is why Western leaders have been united in urging that any change that takes place in the Muslim world is gradual, creeping and ineffectual. They prefer stability since they want the situation to continue to provide them with an advantage.  Hillary Clinton called for the Egyptian government to “implement political, economic and social reforms”. Robert Danin of the Council on Foreign Relations spoke of the Obama administration seeking “managed change” in Egypt not wanting a situation “which would necessitate the leadership to flee”. Middle East Peace Envoy, Tony Blair, when interviewed on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, said “All over that region, there is essentially one issue, which is how do they evolve and modernise, both in terms of their economy, their society and their politics. All I’m saying is that, in the case of Egypt and in the case in Yemen, because there are other factors in this – not least those who would use any vacuum in order to foment extremism – that you do this in what I would call a stable and ordered way”.
The West wants ‘reform’, ‘managed change’, ‘evolution’, anything except the kind of transformation that would see the return of Islam and an end to their colonial influence through their agents.
The time for change is long-overdue but it has to be more fundamental than accepting appeasement from the current regime, accepting a new oppressor to take his place or helping to continue Western interference through cosmetic reforms. For change to be complete, lasting and productive it has to be extended not just to the head of state but to the system itself.

REAL change is possible. The time has come and the Ummah now has an opportunity to achieve something lasting. It should not be wasted but it can only be accomplished if the system changes from kufr to Islam

Wednesday 26 January 2011

How can Muslims say God definitely exists?


The book that Muslims refer to for guidance, the Quran, encourages thought, reflection and investigation. “Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alteration of night and day, these are indeed signs for men of understanding.” (Quran chapter 3, verse 190)


This includes reflecting upon and reasoning whether or not God exists! It prompts us to study and examine anything and everything in the Universe – from the smallest sub-atomic particle to solar systems; from the complexity of an insect to the seemingly mundane such as the clouds and the rain. From reflecting on such things we can reason that everything in the universe has a cause. 

Were this not true, it would mean that the Universe had no beginning, no start point or point of origin; that it would be infinite. The famous mathematician David Hilbert stated that “The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought.” So, infinity is a theoretical idea that we cannot sense in the real world. Those who apply it as an attribute of things in the Universe have departed from reason and are irrational. 

Everything we can sense, however different in nature, share certain qualities: they are limited, finite and dependent on other than themselves. The earth may be very large, but it still has shape, mass and volume that are of a limited size. The same can be said of all planets and indeed stars, solar systems and galaxies. All are limited and all, without exception, are subject to a system of natural laws from which they cannot escape. 
The nature of all these finite and limited things is that they are dependent on other things. They are neither self-sustaining nor independent. The water cycle is dependent on the sun, which is dependent on the gravitational laws and the energy produced by nuclear fusion, and so on. Men – and all creatures - have needs that require satisfaction in order to survive. Nothing is self-subsistent. So things exist, but do not have the power of self-existence, nor can they control when they die, change to become something else, or cease to exist. 

If everything in the Universe, which is made up of lots of limited parts, has a start point and is dependent upon other things, then what is everything dependent upon for its existence? The proposed “Big Bang” would have been preceded by something. What is that something? Another universe? If so, then what was before that? The chain would continue until a true “beginning” was found. 

So the beginning could only be caused by something else - a creator. But, if that creator shared the same properties as the Universe - being limited and dependent - then that creator would also require a creator, as this is the case with every limited thing. So the Creator, which originated everything, must be different - uncaused or eternal, unlimited and independent. This Creator is what we call God, or Allah.


Saturday 22 January 2011

Religion, Rationality and Atheism

This is my best read so far on challenging the atheist way of thinking:

Religious teaching, insofar as it seeks to influence the political sphere, should be subject to rational scrutiny, argues Russell Blackford. 

For those of us cultured upon the understanding that all teachings must be subject to rational scrutiny this may not be a ground-breaking thesis. It is nevertheless an argument increasingly made by advocates of a ‘new’ atheism.

Applying scrutiny to the argument itself however reveals that behind the innocent promotion of rationality lie many cobwebs that betray such an advocacy.

All truth-claims, religious or otherwise, should be subject to rational scrutiny. Rationality in its true broad sense, not in the narrow self-serving sense all too common from atheist circles.

The Atheist Foundation for Australia, for example, defines atheism as: “the acceptance that there is no credible scientific or factually reliable evidence for the existence of a god, gods or the supernatural.”

This definition makes the conflation, intentionally or ignorantly, between rational evidence and scientific evidence, such that the former is restricted to the latter. In reality scientific (empirical) evidence is one type of rational evidence, but not the only type. Other types include the likes of logic, reports and conceptual analysis.

Logical syllogisms based on sound premises and a valid structure are entirely rational. The proposition that all men are mortal combined with the observation that Tom is a man establishes rationally and necessarily that Tom is mortal.

Numerous unrelated people informing Dick that they’ve been to Canada and that it’s a wonderful place proves rationally even for him (who has never sensorially-perceived the existence of Canada) that it exists.

Our acceptance of the concept that human beings are the product of a mother and father, allows us to establish, on analysis of this concept and its rational extension, that Harry had a great great grandfather.

None of these conclusions are scientific, for they do not involve the application of the scientific method. Yet all of them are rational.

So why do atheists persist in wanting scientific evidence for theist assertions? It seems the convenience of a straw man is appealing. Theists, by and large, readily admit that science cannot prove the existence of God. Not because it requires ‘faith’ (unless you’re an adherent of fideism, an untenable position in our view) but because of the limitations of the scientific method itself.

As for rational evidence for the existence of God, that has been furnished, debated, refined and presented centuries ago. Arguments based on logic and conceptual analysis go as far back as Aristotle and Plato, through the Muslim scholastic theologians such as al-Ghazali and al-Razi, and to Western Christian thinkers of medieval Europe such as Aquinas and Bonaventure as well as Enlightenment thinkers such as Leibniz and Clarke.

The Kalam Cosmological argument for example - the strongest proof in our estimation - was developed by Muslim scholars as early as the 11th century CE.

The argument is profound yet simple: the material world we sense around us comprises of temporal phenomena that depend for their existence on other temporal phenomena and so forth. Such a series cannot continue to infinity, for if it did no one thing would satisfy its dependence and nothing would exist. The fact that things do exist necessarily implies a finite series and, in turn, the existence of a being who determined both the existence of this series and the specific attributes or properties that define it.

By rational extension, this being must be eternal and without beginning, otherwise it is temporal and forms part of the series. It must also be sentient for a timeless cause producing a temporal effect requires an independent will. Finally, effecting so grand a creation as the universe and all that it contains necessitates knowledge and power.

Thus, by use of reason alone - no reference to scripture, ‘leaps of faith’ or assumptions - we deduce the existence of an eternal, necessary and transcendent being attributed with knowledge, power and sentience, otherwise known in the English language as ‘God’.

There are of course various objections to arguments like the above. Interested parties can navigate the hundred pages in the recently published Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology devoted to the presentation of a simplified variation of the Kalam Cosmological Argument together with all objections, responses and counter-arguments.

It is not the intent of this piece to assess any of these, but merely to show that rational arguments do exist, have existed for a long time, and are the subject of serious scholarly debate and discussion.

The problem with the atheist approach is that it refuses to recognise that rational arguments exist in the first instance. When presented, the mere raising of some objections or doubt is assumed sufficient to somehow negate the argument.

Such a search for certainty in the proofs of opponents coming from the heralds of science has a touch, a good dose rather, of irony about it. Perhaps they don’t know that science at its essence employs inductive reasoning and more often than not substantiates its conclusions in terms of probability and confidence?

Deeper epistemological considerations such as the varying strengths of different types of proofs, deductive v inductive reasoning, the structure, sources and limits of different types of knowledge are certainly missing from the populist atheist characterisation of ‘science v religion’. A characterisation fit for a children’s comic, but not for serious and sincere public discourse.

The result, at any rate, is a posturing that is anything but rational. The militant atheist bandwagon - driven by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett - continues to paint their theist opposition as irrational simpletons who favour superstition and myth over reason and science.

Worse still, the atheist approach fails to apply the rational scrutiny it calls for upon its own assertions.

Even as a negating proposition atheism makes numerous assertions, implicit if not explicit, that need to be substantiated.

Is the universe eternal? Can an infinite regress of temporal causes actually exist? Where does that leave the bulk of modern astrophysical evidence that points to a beginning of the universe?

If the universe is not eternal and had a beginning, this implies that something came from nothing. Can something come from nothing? An absurd proposition, surely?

And if the case is simply one of science not having yet answered the key questions about the origins of the universe, then is not a reasonable explanation (if not certain in the atheist view) better than no explanation? Are scientific explanations ever certain in the first place?

Further, the denial of God leaves atheists with little room but to subscribe to secular humanism, leading to more assertions that need substantiation.

Why should church be separate from state? Why should religion be singled out for exclusion from influencing public affairs? Religion is after all one worldview from amongst many.

The reality is that secularism is taken for granted to be the best way whilst it is at its core irrational. It is the result of a compromise solution for a geographically, historically, and contextually specific problem, that of pre-Enlightenment Europe. The centuries-old oppression of the Church was sought to be repelled by advocating the separation of religion from state. But this represents a classical flaw of jumping from a particular case to a universal conclusion.

An analogous case would be our arguing that because George Bush’s capitalist, liberal regime in America was oppressive, capitalism and liberalism should have no influence in society.

Devoid of a rational argument for secularism (compromise solutions are never strictly rational), advocates resort to a rather romanticised view of it as a neutral system which allows for a pluralist society where everyone is free to practice their individual beliefs. Yet secularism is built on a specific worldview and is no more neutral than any other ideology. It disallows those parts of other worldviews which contradict with it, just as they would.

We then also have assertions such as the espousal of human reason as a basis for morality. But how can the human mind determine good and evil? It will surely lead to a subjective morality? How is an objective morality and, in turn, moral obligation to be established? What is the ontological basis of morality?

These are just some of the core questions that need definitive answers for atheism and its sister ideologies to substantiate themselves. Mere criticism of opposing views, as aggressive as it may be, will not cover for holes in reason, or be a substitute for rigorous validation.

Perhaps when atheists start applying rational scrutiny to their own beliefs they’ll realise that ‘new atheism’ is little more than a novel product of modern and post-modern thought, and a manifestation of all their deficiencies, inclusive of bells and whistles.

In any case, our response to the call for rational scrutiny of religious teaching is, quite simply, bring it on.

Thursday 20 January 2011

The Dawah Challenge

"Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best. Indeed, your Lord is most knowing of who has strayed from His way, and He is most knowing of who is [rightly] guided". [Qur'an 16:125]


16:125